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I'm kind of amazed that Aaron only won one MVP. But looking through the years, it doesn't seem like he was particularly screwed. It's just tough playing in a league with Mays and McCovey and Koufax and Banks and so forth.

While there were plenty of years that Aaron had a higher WAR than the actual winner, in most of them Mays was even better and also didn't win.

Mays won the MVP in 1954 and then led the league in WAR seven of the next ten years, failing to win the award in any of those seasons. He finally won it again in 1965. Which means he led the league in WAR 9 times in 12 years. That's...pretty good.

The list excludes three players who were significantly better than Harper through age 20: Cobb, Ott, and Mickey Mantle.

It's another great list, but it's no disrespect to say that Trout's is the better list. Trout is just the better player so far; I'd take Trout, with the acknowledgement that a whole lot could break in different ways for either of them over a whole career.

Wasn't a big part of Aaron's HR surge in his 30's due to moving to Atlanta and a more favorable hitting environment than Milwaukee?

Yeah. A-Rod can't gain a similar benefit as he's already in one of the most homer friendly parks there is.

scenario 1. He is suspended for all of next season, but the Yankees are on the book for his remaining contract. That is three more years of playing time, he averages 20 homeruns a year making his total 713, 50 behind the record... That scenario will find him hard press to find anyone giving him playing time as he's at least 2+ years away... and this is what I consider to be the worse case scenario.

I think this is where we differ. You call this the worst case scenario. I'd call it extremely optimistic. A-Rod has now hit a total of 40 homers (yeah, he probably adds 2-3 before the season ends) over the last 3 years, his age 35-37 seasons. He has yet to be suspended for a game, it's all injuries.

Given that, staying in the lineup and hitting well enough to hit 60 homers at age 39-41 seems very, very unlikely. But it is possible. Hitting 100 homers over that time, given the deterioration of his skills and his health, seems impossible.

Let's say A-Rod plays every game for the rest of the year, finishes with 49. He will have played 270 over the last 3 years, 90 per year. What is the most games anyone has ever played, age 39+, given 270 or fewer from ages 35-37?

What people may not know is that Aaron's pursuit of Ruth kind of snuck up on people- how is that possible?

He was stuck in the middle of a great starting cohort
by 1960 Aaron had 219 Home Runs, a terrific total for a 26 year old, in 1960 only 4 batters in MLB history had more homers through age 26- Foxx, Matthews, Mantle and Ott- well 2 of those guys were direct contempraries of Aaron-

Aaron had 219 Home Runs through 1960
Snider had 368 (he was 32)
Matthews had 338 (he was 28)
Mantle had 320 (28)
Mays had 279 (29)
Banks had 269 (29)

Through 1963 Aaron had 342
Matthews 422
Mantle 419
Mays 406
Banks 353
(Aaron of course was the youngest of the group, but still both Mantle and Matthews had more HR through age 29- but it wasn't easy to look up # of HRs by such and such an age back then)

People were discussing whether or not Mays could reach 700-even though he was obviously slowing down- whether or not he could reach Ruth. There was an [in]famous article written discussing how Mays had become the second guy ever to reach 600, and how we were not likely to see another one for a generation or more (Hello? McFly! There's a freight train right behind Mays and you know that objects in the rearview are closer than they appear?)

1970: Mays 628, Aaron 592, basically Aaron had been gaining rapidly on Mays since about 1967 (he was always ahead by some amount BY AGE, but now he was closing in on the actual all time leaderboards), Mays had something of a bounce back year in 1970, so he was still in the running and ahead of Aaron in the minds of most.

1971: Mays 646, Aaron 639- this is when it seems that even though Mays was still "ahead," that the bulk of baseball fandom and the baseball media realized that: 1. Mays isn't going to get there; 2. Aaron is.

1972: Aaron 673
Mays: 654

1973: Aaron 713 (had to be psychologically the longest off season for any player ever)

If they had the favorite toy back then, career projections, hell even leader boards by age, I think people who have realized 10+ years in advance that hey, this Aaron has a real shot, but without that reference material, and playing alongside Mays, aaron just snuck up on people

# 111: I lived through that from the mid-60s onward, and yes, you characterize the general perception correctly, that Aaron snuck up on everyone. IIRC, it was Aaron's big 44-HR season in 1969, getting him to 554, that began to change the level of awareness.

And you're right that a favorite-toy kind of projection would have made it clearer in the early '60s that Aaron was somebody to look out for in this regard, but it's also true that no sane projector would have predicted Aaron's actual HR output from age 35 onward.

#111 I don't trust my memory of such things, but I recall reading "Home run record" articles in places like Baseball Digest as early as 1968. As I recall it, Aaron started to get some mention in 1969. I don't honestly recall the articles of 1970 though.

At the time, Fulton County Stadium was the highest above sea level in MLB. Combine that with a lot of hot and humid weather, and it was
good HR park even though its 330', 385', 402' around the wall dimensions would seem average-ish.

If I ran the numbers right, these are the Favorite Toy numbers for Mays and Aaron from the first year you could do the numbers for Hank, up through Aaron's 713th home run. (The numbers are for 715 homers, and for the end of the listed season.) It's impressive that FT would have pegged Aaron from the outset as someone with a legitimate shot at the record, though things got dicey at the end of his tenure in Milwaukee.

Second game of a May 17, 1970 double header for Aaron. July 18, 1970 for Mays

Thanks, allisd! And then, II continue to RC, this was a big deal when I was eleven because nobody had reached 3,000 since Paul Waner; the concept of a "club," long in abeyance and with (all?) the members dead, revived with Aaron. I think there was an SI cover story, that sort of thing. It definitely put Aaron on a plane with Mays, for once, the plane that Mantle had shared till he retired.

Hank Aaron was my mother's favorite player. However, my mother hated baseball, and knew nothing about it. My father was a Cub fan and I reckon my mom asked him c1957 who was better than the Cubs, and who their best player was. From that day on she rooted for Aaron and the Braves, though I doubt she could ever have told you if they won yesterday or anything.

# 111: I lived through that from the mid-60s onward, and yes, you characterize the general perception correctly, that Aaron snuck up on everyone. IIRC, it was Aaron's big 44-HR season in 1969, getting him to 554, that began to change the level of awareness.

When I was about 11 I remember one of those wrap up baseball magazines after the 1969 season. They had a short section on the star players of the day. I remember vividly, the title for the Mays article was "Twighlight Time", and the title for the Aaron article was "On the Babe's trail"